DIVISION OF LABOUR IN RELATION TO DESIGN 353 



material and immaterial, because of this shading ofi and refinement of matter, become blurred, and lose, to a certain 

 extent, their meaning. Of course, the term immaterial, strictly speaking, means something which is separate and 

 distinct from matter, however rarefied and however minutely divided. 



There is no such thing as immaterial substance, but immaterial ultimate force or spirit as it exists in the 

 Creator has long been recognised. This ultimate force or spirit manifests itself in the creation, distribution, and 

 direction of matter and force in the universe as a whole. Vital and mental force have also been regarded by 

 the majority of philosophers and psychologists as essentially immaterial. In this connection, it is proper to point 

 out, that in the higher animals and in man, where vital and mental force or mind can be studied and analysed, 

 intellectual endowment has a physical basis ; intelligence gradually increases with the growth and differentiation 

 of the nervous system as we rise in the scale of being ; the monkeys having less reasoning power than savage man, 

 and savage man than civilised, modern man. The reasoning powers advance pari passu with the development of 

 the nervous system. 



As proving the ultimate connection between mind and body, it suffices to say that mind temporarily dis- 

 appears during sleep, also when the molecules of the brain are suddenly disturbed, as in concussion, also when a 

 poisonous gas is inhaled, also in certain diseases, &c. The mind returns when the body awakes from sleep, and 

 when it resumes its normal functions. We have no knowledge of mind in the organic kingdom as apart from the 

 body, and this brings us to the border line which divides the material from the immaterial. It has never been 

 shown that the mind of man exists as apart from his body, so that its continuation after death as spirit or soul 

 must be assumed unless immortality be based on the indestructibility of matter and of force. Such a state of 

 things is not only conceivable but highly probable ; indeed it may be said to follow as a corollary, if matter and force 

 are regarded as inseparable. 



It is beyond the scope of the present work to discuss the mind as a separate entity ; but I may venture to 

 point out that the thinking individual never thinks without his body, and that abstract thought affords no proof 

 of the separate existence of mind or of the immortality of the soul. 



DEVELOPMENT AND DIVISION OF LABOUR IN RELATION 



TO DESIGN 



Plants and animals are, without exception, derived from cells or portions of cells. Some plants and animals 

 remain cells — that is, they do not divide, differentiate, or advance to anything else. We have examples of cell 

 plants in the snow plant and Sarcina ventricuU, and of cell animals in the zooids, the amoeba, and other low forms. 



The fact that there are plants and animals which never get beyond the cell stage, while others differentiate into 

 complex beings up to man, where there is a highly-developed nervous, vascular, lymphatic, respiratory, muscular, 

 osseous, and glandular system, shows very plainly that cells fundamentally differ from each other, and that each 

 cell, and system of cells, is originally distinct. In other words, the primordial or primitive cell from which plants 

 and animals are developed is endowed with properties essentially its own, and has hmits set to its development, 

 and the direction of its development ; each cell and each plant and animal being capable of reproducing their hke, 

 but only their like ; it being impossible to produce an animal from a plant and vice versd, or a vertebrate from an 

 invertebrate, or different vertebrates from each other. This means, that a reptile cannot be obtained from a fish, 

 a bird from a reptile, or a mammal from a bird. I am well aware that all this is opposed to natural selection, and 

 evolution in its widest sense, and that Mr. Darwin and others have endeavoured to prove that plants and animals 

 have a common origin, and that even man, with his God-like form and wealth of imagination and intellect, is indirectly 

 and remotely the product of an oyster or some rudimentary, soft-bodied animal with neither brain nor nervous 

 system, and wanting in all those elaborate arrangements which characterise the higher animals. The grand climax 

 in development witnessed in man is said to be reached by an infinity of accidental, trifling modifications in practi- 

 cally unUmited time, but no actual proof of the several modifications and transformations referred to has been, 

 or can be, adduced. Professor Haeckel has done his best to show that mammals closely resemble each other during 

 their developmental stages, and Professor Huxley has given it as his opinion that the birds have been manufac- 

 tured from the reptiles and are their direct descendants. The views of Mr. Darwin and Professors Haeckel and 

 Huxley are traversed in other portions of this work, and all that need be said here is that, lacking proof, they are 



inconclusive and unsatisfactory. 



It is abundantly evident from the permanency of existing forms that cell plants and animals, and plants and 

 animals as a whole, have limits beyond which they may not stray. It is equally certain that cells and cell plants 

 and animals develop along given lines, and that they have no power either to direct or control their growth. These 

 VOL. I. ^ 



